Landfall

The Stars Like Sand

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry is a well-reviewed 2014 anthology of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry that I co-edited with P. S. Cottier. You can buy The Stars Like Sand from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

Men Briefly Explained

Men Briefly Explained is my 2011 poetry collection that explains men, briefly. You can buy Men Briefly Explained from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

My Library from LibraryThing

About Me

I'm a writer, editor, anthologist, and now blogger who was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England and moved to New Zealand with my family when I was 2.
I grew up on the West Coast and in Southland, then went to Dunedin to go to Otago University before moving to Wellington in 1993. I'm married with one child.
I'm juggling the writing of poetry, short fiction and novels, working part time, trying to be a good husband and father, and working hard to get New Zealand to take effective action on climate change - not to mention all the other problems the world faces. Life is busy!

Marty Smith says: Horses have large round eyes like billiard balls set in the sides of their heads, which means they can see behind for danger. So the horse might as well tell the story of the long relationship between men and horses, in which horses always end badly. The poem also takes a gentle poke at the way horses are often represented in a mawkishly sentimental way.

Tim says: I've been nervous around horses ever since John Meredith's fifth birthday party. John lived along Glengarry Crescent from me. The feature of his fifth birthday party was a large and placid horse in the back garden, on which the partygoers were offered rides. When my turn came, I lasted partway round the ride before sliding off the back of the horse and falling to the ground - and though I have since ridden horses without repeating that indignity, I have never quite conquered those early nerves. So I am glad to present a poem seen from the horse's point of view, from a poet with infinitely more confidence around and knowledge of horses than I - and a wonderful ability to express that in her poetry.

19 May 2015

David Howard has alerted me to the sad news that Christchurch poet John O'Connor died recently. I didn't know John well, but I enjoyed talking with him when I was in Christchurch, and he kindly gave me the opportunity to feature his poem Johnny as a hub Tuesday Poem. It comes from his 2013 collection Aspects of Reality (HeadworX).

John O’Connor was a Christchurch poet and critic. He was co-winner of the open section of the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition in 1998 and winner of both the open and haiku sections of the same competition in 2006. In 2000 his fifth book of poetry, A Particular Context, was voted one of the five best books of New Zealand poetry of the 1990s by members of the NZPS. He was an editor for Canterbury Poets Combined Presses and was founding editor the poetry magazine plainwraps, co-founder of Sudden Valley Press and Poets Group, occasional editor of Takahe, Spin and the NZPS annual anthology.

He was a past chair and long-term committee member of the Canterbury Poets Collective. His poetry has been widely published and is represented in Essential New Zealand Poems (Random House/Godwit, 2001). His haiku have been internationally anthologized and translated into eight languages. In 1997 he received an Honorary Diploma from the Croatian Haiku Association and in 2001 a Museum of Haiku Literature Award, Tokyo, for “best of issue” in Frogpond International, a special issue from the Haiku Society of America, featuring haiku from 52 countries and language communities.

A Left Hook

an early experienceof the left hook (admirably

tight if open-handed) cameat the beatific hand of

Monseigneur O'Dea - tooold to be a parish priest - who

about to impart the verybody & blood of Christ found I

was not holding the patencorrectly. a few years later

an equally irascible boxingcoach imparted impeccable

advice on how to throw it,though he didn't know the bit

about feinting with Jesus.when the good monseigneur

had his final photo takenhe bestowed a copy on our family

- old friends should be so blessed -for a decade it sat on the mantelpiece

between a bunch of plastic grapes& a glass bowl that snowed if shaken.

This poem is from John O'Connor's recently published Cornelius & Co: Collected Working-Class Verse 1996-2009 (Post Pressed, Queensland, 2010), which I also reviewed.

The Tuesday Poem: This week's poem is Albert Park by Alice Miller, a finalist in this year's Sarah Broom Poetry Prize (won by Diana Bridge).

13 May 2015

As I blogged about last week, I was the guest reader at Hawke's Bay Live Poets on Monday night - and I had a great time! A number of people who had heard me read (and whom I had heard read) at the first New Zealand Poetry Conference held in nearby Havelock North in 2013 took part in the evening, plus many people I hadn't met previously.

The evening, compered by my welcoming and generous host Bill Sutton, started with a very high-quality open mike session - poems by turn moving, thought-provoking, and in at least one case absolutely hilarious. After the break it was my turn, and after a bit of a slow start - I hadn't read for quite a while, and it showed at first - I got more and more into it, and judging by the reaction of the friendly audience, they did as well - so I ended up feeling very pleased with how the night had gone.

Talking to people during the break and after the reading, I was reminded of my experience in 2011 when I was a guest at the Readers and Writers Alive! Literary Festival in Invercargill: in both Invercargill and Hawke's Bay, I met and heard writers whose work was clearly good enough to be published in magazines and anthologies and collected in book form, but who didn't think it was a realistic ambition for someone in their position to break into what they saw (not inaccurately, in my view) as the Wellington/Auckland literary axis.

The success of poets such as Marty Smith make it clear that this can in fact be done; but (I suspect) from the non-metropolitan parts of New Zealand, the "mainstream" of New Zealand literature seems like one cosy club where everyone knows and publishes everyone else, and which sets a high bar for 'outsiders' to jump. The reality might look different to those who live in the cities - in Wellington, for example, there are distinctly different, although sometimes overlapping, International Institute of Modern Letteres (IIML) and non-IIML scenes - but I suspect this view is more true than many of us would care to admit.

The 2013 New Zealand Poetry Conference, which Bill played a key role in organising, helped to break down those barriers: I hope and expect that the New Zealand Poetry Conference 2015, to be held in Wellington in November, will include poetic voices from across the country, and not just end up as another metropolitan talking shop.

Last year, I went to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse play at the Queen's Wharf Events Centre in Wellington. Knowing that Neil Young + Crazy Horse = the rockers, not the folkie stuff, I went along expecting powerchords, guitar solos, and feedback - and that's what I got (barring a short acosutic interlude in the middle).

But (when I could hear at all) I was amazed to hear people around me complaining "Why isn't he playing the hits? Where's A Man Needs A Maid? Where's Lotta Love?"

If this happens even when an artist is playing old but lesser-known material, imagine what it's like for the long-established band, going out on tour yet again, that tries to play material from its new album. Nobody wants that shit - they want the hits from twenty years ago! Sleater-Kinney seem to have avoided this in their recent reunion tour, but for most rockers of a certain vintage, the gap between musicians' expectations and audience reaction must be hard to take.

I may be ageing, but I'm not a rock star - what are those three preceding paragraphs even about? So when I read at the Hawke's Bay Poetry Society next Monday, I'm going to try out some of the new poems I've been writing this year - along with some poems that have been knocking around the "set" for a while.

I attended the first New Zealand Poetry conference in Hastings in 2013, and found the Hawke's Bay poetry audience to be knowledgeable and appreciative, so I'm not too worried about their reactions to "the new stuff" - though I can always distract them by stabbing a Hammond organ with knives: